"It's incredibly sad, the first opportunity they have to walk the talk on gender equality, they've simply ignored the advice," he says.

"Worse than that, we had a rally here at Parliament in early May where the Minister stood in front of them and said 'I'm listening very carefully', knowing four months before that he'd brushed that advice completely away and said it was unaffordable.

"What it says to women is that they're not worth the value that they provide."

If the proposed model was adopted, it would cost $353 million a year - an increase of $237 million per year above current funding levels.

The report also advised the Minister not to proceed with recommendations because it's unlikely to be affordable for the Government in the short or long term.

Minister Clark told Newshub that's realistic.

"The Ministry advised me that they didn't think that was their best advice, and so they advised me not to proceed down that path, and I agreed with them," he says.

"In the Budget there was $103 million over four years to increase midwives' pay, and also to make sure we had a situation where midwives could hand over after a long and difficult labour and not face a financial penalty to another midwife, so money set aside for that.

"And also some additional money to recognise the distinctive operating model that they're under to compensate midwives further."

The co-design project which made the recommendations was set up under National after midwives sued the then-Government over pay discrimination, arguing in the High Court that they were underfunded and discriminated against because of their gender.

Newshub.

An earlier version of this article stated that the advice said midwives are worth fives their average salary. That was comparing the current net salary to the proposed gross salary. The article has been amended to compare net baseline salaries.